Victor M. Quintana S.
AND
he judged Genaro García Luna in the United States not only exposes his collusion with organized crime, but also questions the entire war on drugs
undertaken by Felipe Calderón.
García Luna himself presented, in his capacity as Secretary of Public Security, the Comprehensive Strategy for the Prevention of Crime and Fight against Crime before Felipe Calderón on March 7, 2007. From there, the operations of the Army and the Federal Police, carried out in various states. We now know that the operations of the Calderon government were not innocent, but rather, the civilian population having always been the first to be harmed, there were criminal groups that were contained, harmed, but also others who clearly benefited.
The case of the state of Chihuahua clearly shows how the strategy of García Luna and Calderón was decisive for the entry and strengthening of the Sinaloa cartel in the entity. As part of this they undertook the Chihuahua joint operationin March 2008, first, with the arrival of thousands of troops from the Army and then from the Federal Police.
Although the figures for insecurity and violence in Chihuahua were not low, it is impressive how they rose from the operation led by García Luna: in 2007 there were 518 intentional homicides in that state; One year after the start of the operation, they multiplied by more than five: 2,604 murders in 2008; a figure that rose to 3,680 in 2009 and up to 10,421 in 2010, almost 20 times more than before the intervention of federal forces. Between 2008 and 2012, 22 massacres of four or more people were perpetrated in the state, with a balance of 246 deaths.
The number of murders per 100,000 inhabitants, which before the operation was 16.97; it rose to 148.9 murders in 2010, the highest average in the country and one of the highest on the planet. one in five executions that occurred during Calderon’s six-year term occurred in Chihuahua: 16,467 of the 83,191 that were perpetrated on a national scale.
Although the murders of women in Chihuahua began to be reported in 1993, they did not exceed the figure of 55 per year, and in 2007 they reached 46, but after the operation they multiplied by three: 125 in 2008 and reached 442 in 2010.
Young people were the ones who paid the most their death toll for the Operation: according to the Inegi, in Chihuahua in 2007 201 young people were killed and for 2009, 1,647, an increase of 719 percent, which made homicides in the state become the first cause of death for the group between 15 and 19 years of age.
Criminal violence also skyrocketed between 2007 and 2010: crimes in general almost doubled in Chihuahua: from 34,800 to 66,125; car theft tripled: from 9,490 to 30,757 and kidnappings multiplied by six: from 21 to 132 per year.
A result collateral
The intervention of the Army and the Federal Police in Chihuahua in those years was the humanitarian crisis that it provoked: only in Ciudad Juárez there were 10,000 orphans; 230 thousand people were displaced from their place of residence; several hundred enforced disappearances; In the first three years of the operation, there were 1,092 complaints of human rights violations by federal forces.
In those years, explanations were given for the escalation of violence: that the intervention of federal forces caused the cartels to fight among themselves and to recruit and arm unorganized common criminals to defend themselves against the federales and rival cartels. ; that the infiltration of the cartels in the federal forces sharpened the confrontations; that the multiplication of armed people made criminal acts of all kinds easier, and so on.
Now we can affirm that, thanks to the proven complicity of García Luna with the Sinaloa cartel, as was shown in the trial of the top security official of the calderonato, the Chihuahua joint operation It was not so much an attack on drug trafficking in Chihuahua. It was, above all, an offensive against the criminal organization that unquestionably controlled the state at the time: the Juárez cartel and an intervention to promote the entry and control of new spaces in favor of the organization that was favored at all times by García Luna: the Sinaloa cartel.
The action against drug trafficking was a war dirty with thousands of harmed innocents and with a few and undoubted beneficiaries. It has produced immense doses of human suffering and has kept levels of insecurity well above those prior to the operation. From then dates the strengthening of the fentanyl suppliers that the Americans demand so much – and do not fight on their soil. Garcia Luna, the Calderón government’s security strategist, must be asked to account for this and repair the damage, and he, who is ultimately responsible for her, it has been as it has been.
